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Monday, October 19, 2015

Map of Oz Monday - Minor Map Mop-Up

We are quickly running out of maps in the main series of forty Oz books. Today we'll look at a couple of the remaining few. First we come to the "Diagram of a Journey" in Neill's Lucky Bucky in Oz (1942). As described in the illustration it is clearly "not a true map," yet it does have a couple interesting features, besides being a handsome image.

LUCKY BUCKY Map - Click to enlarge.

The geographic detail in this image, such as the Zeron's Mountain, Dollfins, etc., could easily be incorporated into a "true" map. There is a lot of detail in the mountain range as depicted. But one thing I found especially interesting is that Neill gives us a view of Ozma's palace from the south. You might remember we discussed the northerly view in a previous blog post. Here Neill has definitely drawn a different view of the palace without the grand entrance or the pair of high towers in the wall. Is Neill consciously drawing it differently, as he has clearly shown he beleives the main entrance to the palace is on the north side?

Note that we see Ozma's Palace, surrounded by its high wall, but surrounding it are many small Oz-style cottages with their domed roofs and "stick 'em up!" chimneys, shown both to the north and south of the palace. Neill does not show any outer city wall. Does this suggest that Neill may have considered the entire green area on most traditional Oz maps to be "the city" and that only the palace is behind the wall? This might explain why he seems to never show the outer wall in his later Oz book illustrations. Essentially he is giving us the walled Palace and grounds surrounded by Emerald City suburbs of traditional Oz-style homes. Then again, this isn't a "true map."

The next map in the Reilly & Lee Oz series comes to us as the endpapers of Jack Snow's Who's Who in Oz (1954).

1954 Map of Oz - Click to enlarge.

Since it is hard to see the complete image when it is used as endpapers I have reproduced the above from a postcard-size version of the same map that was probably prepared by the publisher for Snow to send to his various Oz fan correspondents.

There is not much new to say about this map. The most interesting thing is that it combines the two 1914 maps into one. Thus we have the detailed "Map of the Land of Oz" embedded within the "Map of the Countries Surrounding the Land of Oz."

One correction that I suspect Snow might have personally asked for is that the "corn ear" that was used to represent Jack Pumpkinhead on earlier Reilly & Lee maps has been replaced with a drawing of Jack's head. The map also has the mountains drawn in the representational style I associate with Tolkien maps, where you see the profiles of the mountains instead of the more topographical view used in the earlier maps.

The last odd design choice was that the Deadly Desert is populated with assorted cactus, cattle skulls, broken wagon wheels, and the like. Ride 'em cowboy!

The map was reused two years later in the first Reilly & Lee edition of The Wizard of Oz, which was otherwise illustrated by Dale Ulrey. But in this 1956 edition of Wizard the map is reproduced in color!

1956 Map of the Land of Oz - Click to enlarge.

As you can see, the staff artist that colored the map also eliminated the countries surrounding Oz. And then, coloring the area beyond the desert a couple shades of blue, they have given the impression that Oz and its Deadly Desert is surrounded by an ocean rather than the usual adjacent countries.

3 comments:

The Who's Who map and the Ulrey Wizard map both have preserved the "stretch" left over from the extra space inserted to cover the hinge gap in the Tik-Tok endpaper map. This seems particularly inappropriate for the Who's Who and Ulrey versions, since these maps are reproduced on endpapers, too. This results in the Emerald City being much too far to the left.

The usual progression of maps is that they become more refined and correct in successive versions. The opposite happens in Oz--the map becomes more corrupt and inaccurate.